AWSON County, in the south central portion of Nebraska on the Platte river, was the scene of many transportation advances, each of them contributing toward its final organization. The Oregon Trail, which followed the south bank of the Platte, was a definite road by 1843. On April 3, 1860, the Pony Express was inaugurated and several of its stations were in what was later to be Dawson County. Three years later the Union Pacific railroad, also following the Platte, traversed Dawson County.
In 1871, four years after Nebraska became a state, Dawson County was officially organized by a proclamation of the governor, which authorized an election of county officers. It was named in honor of James Dawson, postmaster of the first postoffice in Lincoln. Daniel Freeman, who lived at the Plum Creek Pony Express station south of the river, had been active in obtaining the county's official organization. He was appointed by acting Governor William James as the first election judge. Forty persons were then living in the county, and thirteen men cast their ballots at Freeman's store in Plum Creek, which is now Lexington. The officers elected were J. W. Dalahunty, Joseph Smith and Otto Hanson, commissioners; Daniel Freeman, clerk and superintendent of schools; John Kehoe, sheriff and assessor; Richard O'Keef, probate judge; David Meek, surveyor; and Patrick Gaffney, coroner. The commissioners first met in 1871, and divided the county into three precincts.
The next year, 1872, a $2,000 bond issue to aid immigration into the county carried at a special election by a vote of eleven to ten. That same year the county's first public road was laid out north of the Union Pacific tracks. It completely crossed the county from east to west. A colony of sixty-five settlers from Pennsylvania also arrived that year, taking up land around the Union Pacific depot in Plum Creek. A windmill there served as a landmark for many early settlers. The year 1872 also saw the establishment of the county's first postoffice, in the same depot. A store box served as a container for both the incoming and outgoing mail. The county's residents were given a chance to get acquainted at a Fourth of July celebration that year.
There were few trees in the county in the early seventies, most of them around Buffalo creek. Homesteaders' sod houses and shacks dotted the prairie at infrequent intervals. The inhabitants often saw herds of antelope and deer near the foothills and an occasional elk or buffalo. Plum Creek was the trading point for all the surrounding Platte valley, as well as for the Republican valley region and the territory north of the Loup river.
In 1873 three new towns--Willow Island, Overton, Cozad--were established. Josiah Hoffman was the founder of Willow Island; James Patten and D. B. Worley laid out Overton; John J. Cozad brought a group of colonists from Ohio to start the town which bears his name. That same year witnessed construction of a Platte river bridge at Plum Creek--the first west of Columbus. Its opening on July 4 was celebrated with a dance in the Union Pacific coal shed. A bond election on May 1, 1873, resulted in a three to one approval of $30,000 for erection of a permanent courthouse to transact business of the ever growing county.
When the building was completed two years later, the county officers instructed the sheriff to furnish it with, "three stoves and fixtures, five lamps, twelve chairs, one pitcher, two buckets, two dippers, two brooms and ten spittoons." That structure was used until, the present courthouse was erected in 1914.
As is always true in pioneer life, early Dawson County settlers suffered their portion of hardship. In 1873, the first year when any extensive crops were raised, a grasshopper invasion occurred late in the season. All the corn which had not matured was destroyed. The next year, just before the wheat, oats and barley were ready for harvest, another cloud of grasshoppers descended. They left nothing but bare stalks.
These disasters drove out those settlers who had come to Dawson County on the promise of "easy money." Hundreds of covered wagons, bearing the notation, "Going back home to the wife's folks," began the long trek eastward. But the hardier persons, encouraged by financial help from more prosperous friends and relatives in the east, remained. Their confidence in their ultimate prosperity was unshaken. However, little was raised the next few years, because of grasshoppers, drouth and hot winds. Mr. Cozad instituted a sort of a "private WPA," by employing indigent persons to erect a number of buildings. Another of his projects was a sod bridge across the Platte. Although never completed, this bridge gave employment to many men.
After providing themselves with homes and a means of making a livelihood, the settlers next took care of their educational and religious needs. Father Ryan, a Catholic priest, conducted the first services in 1867 at the old Plum Creek station house which served as a church for several years. Five years later Rev. William Wilson organized the county's first Methodist society. In 1873-74 Presbyterians,

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Missionary Baptists and Episcopalians organized churches.
Dawson County school district No. 1 was organized Feb. 17, 1871, even before the county was officially formed. Patrick Welch, superintendent of Buffalo County schools, was active in establishing the school, which was first held in a pioneer's home. Plum Creek's first schoolhouse, measuring 28 by 40 feet, was built in 1873. For a time this structure was used for practically all public gatherings--religious services, revival meetings and funerals. As the population swelled, other districts were organized and new buildings erected.
Pioneer fraternal orders to be established in Dawson County were the Sons of Temperance, Plum Creek, 1873; Patrons of Husbandry, Plum Creek and Overton, 1873; Masons, Plum Creek, 1876; Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Cozad, 1875.
For entertainment in the early days, Dawson County citizens depended on baseball games, revivals, dances and "Literary" meetings. There was intense rivalry between the ball teams of neighboring towns and settlements. In the spring and fall great herds of cattle were driven through the county by cowboys. These men stayed overnight with the farmers, paying for this hospitality with news, stories, and other entertainment.
Conditions began to improve in the early eighties, and a new tide of immigration entered the county. Increasing acres of land were put under cultivation, towns grew, many homes and business houses were erected.
Dawson County has had a goodly portion of Indian troubles, most notable of which were the Plum Creek massacres. In August of 1864 a wagon train from Sidney Iowa, was attacked without warning by several hundred Sioux as the party neared Plum Creek. The eleven men in the group were dead before they had a chance to fire a single shot. The one woman, wife of the man in charge, was captured. Help was summoned from Fort Kearny and a troop of soldiers came to the scene. A month later a similar massacre took place near the same place. This time seventeen men, were killed. In 1865 the government established a military post on Plum creek about twelve miles southeast of the present site of Lexington for the protection of immigrants, freighters and the stage company.
Irrigation has played a large part in the building of Dawson County's agriculture. The Dawson County Irrigation Company began digging a ditch north of the Platte in 1894. Today there are two other canals north of the Platte, one for the Gothenburg Power and Light Company, the other owned by the Cozad Co-operative. The three ditches on the south side of the river are the Thirty Mile Canal, the Six Mile Canal and the Orchard and Alfalfa Ditch, also known as the South Side Ditch. These six canals irrigate some 150,000 acres of Dawson County soil, and are a large factor in its productivity. During recent years of severe drouth, however, not enough water for all irrigators has been available. The Platte has been dry through the greater part of the summer. Several companies, therefore, have signed contracts for storage water from Sutherland reservoir of the Platte Valley Public Power and Irrigation district. This storage water will be used to supplement the natural stream flow. Water from this reservoir was first used in the summer of 1939. In addition to this type of irrigation, 30,000 acres are being pump irrigated from more than 400 wells scattered over the county.
Today one of Dawson County's principal crops is the sugar beet, to which 30,000 to 40,000 thousand acres are devoted. The greatest acreage, however, is planted to com, and next come wheat, beets, barley, oats and potatoes. Drouth-resistant crops such as sorghums, milo and cane are a recent development in Dawson County farming, and no figures as to their acreage are available.
There is a very small percentage of abandoned farms in Dawson County. Its people, with their heritage of courage from the pioneers, have weathered both drouth and depressions. And, like the original settlers, they have unbounded confidence in the future of their county.